Problems with Vlastos’s Platonic Developmentalism

Abstract

Adherents to developmentalism are eommitted to the interloeking premises that Plato's views evolved or developed over his produetive lifetime, and that the ehronologieal order of eomposition of the dialogues ean be reeonstrueted with suffieient eonfidenee to yield a mapping of doetrines to dialogues. With one fur­ ther premise, that the earliest dialogues depiet the views of the historieal Soerates, the orthodoxy of Anglo-Ameriean PI atonie studies is off and running. The most influential developmentalist of this generation is Gregory VIastos whose long ehain of artieles over many years, advoeating and elaborating these premises, has been widely aeeepted: 'early' dialogues are marked by Plato's adherenee to the doetrines of the historieal Soerates, 'transitional' ones by a movement away from 'Soeratie' views and the appearanee of seminal theories, and 'middle' ones by a philosophieal maturity in whieh the eharaeter Soerates had beeome a mouthpieee for Plato' s very different doetrines. 1

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